Venezuela

Chavez, God and the voters

THE opinion polls give President Hugo Chavez a clear lead of 15-20 points over his main rival, Francisco Arias Cardenas, and he seems assured of victory in the general election due on May 28th. But to be on the safe side, Mr Chavez has been lashing out at the two most influential institutions that have yet to come under the sway of the “revolution” he has unleashed since he was first elected 18 months ago. They are the Catholic church and the media.

Whatever the church may think, God supports the revolution, Mr Chavez has frequently claimed. Thus provoked, the Bishops' Conference has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of the president. In an open letter to Mr Chavez being distributed in Venezuela's churches, the bishops point out that medieval crusaders used such claims of divine approval to commit atrocities for which the pope has recently had to apologise. Last week Monsignor Baltazar Porras, the president of the conference, switching similes, accused the president of acting “like an ayatollah”. He said the government's aim was to silence or eliminate all dissent.

Some aspects of Mr Chavez's “fifth republic”, ushered in by a new constitution approved last December, are undemocratic, say the bishops. They question the make-up of the National Electoral Council and other supposedly independent institutions, whose members have been hand-picked by the government with no consultation. The president's rejoinder is that Bishop Porras and some of his colleagues are “counter-revolutionaries” who never spoke out against corruption and the abuse of power under the discredited two-party system he was elected to destroy. “You can't be in good standing with God and the devil,” declares Mr Chavez. This week, he released a 20-page letter to the bishops in which he warned that, if “the peaceful path of the revolution” is blocked, it could turn violent.

The media, too, have been the target of presidential tirades—and worse. Napoleon Bravo, a television journalist, has blamed the government for the abrupt closure on May 3rd of his morning news programme on Venevision, the country's most-watched television station. It is owned by the Cisneros family, Venezuela's richest. Not only had they been threatened with the loss of their broadcasting licence, said Mr Bravo, but he and his family had received anonymous death threats traced to a state security agency.

Will all this hurt Mr Chavez's election prospects? Polls show that the church and the media both enjoy public trust. But the church has never had much influence over voting patterns. And the media's predominantly anti-Chavez stance seems to have done little to erode his popularity.

The best that Mr Chavez's opponents can hope for may be to deny him the two-thirds majority in Congress that would give him almost unlimited power. It helps them that the Patriotic Pole coalition assembled by Mr Chavez for the 1998 election has frayed. One of its member parties, the leftist Fatherland for All, this week announced it would no longer support Mr Chavez, because of his sniping at its candidates for state governorships. But the party commands less than 4% of the votes.

Mr Chavez's people seem to have sidestepped a potentially more serious obstacle. Rather than pursue allegations of corruption against Luis Miquilena, the president of the legislative commission and the second-most-powerful figure in the government, the public prosecutor has handed the matter to the Supreme Court. It must now decide whether there is any merit to claims of influence-peddling against Mr Miquilena.

At the same time, the prosecutor has taken more robust action against Mr Miquilena's accuser: Jesus Urdaneta, a former police chief, has been charged with illicit enrichment, together with Mr Arias Cardenas's campaign manager, who has been forced to resign from that job as a result. The prosecutor, like the Supreme Court, was appointed by a constituent assembly, over which Mr Miquilena presided. By giving Venezuela a new Congress and a stronger opposition, the election may mean that Mr Miquilena faces more scrutiny in future. But it seems unlikely to damn Mr Chavez.